Tag Archives: Roger Ailes

“If you would strike at a prince, you must kill him.” –Niccolo Machiavelli

The fall of Roger Ailes is an ephocal event in the history of modern news media. For a man who delivers more than $1 billion in annual profit to his boss and who delivers the top viewer ratings in cable TV news to be fired certainly marks the end of an era.

His departure today was brought about by the charges of sexual harrassment filed in court by Fox News on-air star Gretchen Carlson. (Before there was Megyn Kelly, there was Gretchen.)

Megyn Kelly Credit: Dennis Van Tine

Ailes was a king-maker who became a powerful prince himself within the kingdom of American conservatism. By assembling a loyal audience for Fox News, Ailes performed several important services for resurgent conservatism:

–Fox News attacked the rest of the news media

–Fox News provided an outlet for conservatives (including climate deniers, conspiracy theorists, and conservative ideologues who could not get on the air otherwise)

–Fox News hounded the Clintons and Obama while endorsing and defending George W. Bush

–Fox News cultivated and sustained Bill O’Reilly (and stood by him when O’Reilly had his own problems with a sexual harrasment claim).

–Fox News, by selling ads for gold bullion, attorneys for the plaintiff’s bar, and many other products, delivered a consistent profit stream to Murdoch’s News Corp.

The back story is well told in the 2014 biography of Ailes by the journalist Gabriel Sherman. The book is titled “The Loudest Voice in the Room” and subtitled “How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided a Country.” Sherman, a national correspondent for New York Magazine whose recent daily reporting has driven and shaped the coverage of Ailes, lays out the rise of Ailes from the day the young tv producer met Richard Nixon in 1967 and lectured the veteran politician on the power of television.

Ailes went on to work for Nixon, then became an impresario of conservative media. He had a big role in the rise of conservative talk-show champ Rush Limbaugh, then teamed up with conservative media mogul to found Fox News in 1996.

Fox News is the embodiment of Roger Ailes. He is responsible for the shrewd and deeply cynical slogans “Fair and balanced” and “We report/you decide.” Never mind that neither slogan was true. They served the purpose of assembling an audience of American conservatives who consider Fox a national message board.

Ailes harrangued the mainstream media for being liberal, while building the most ideological news operation on the air, all the while denying that he was doing so.

What brought him down was his failure to make an alliance with Murdoch’s sons, who are the future of News Corp. The sons may be less conservative than their father and, as members of a younger generation, they certainly have far less tolerance for the towel-slapping, know-nothing ethos of the Fox News morning show. On that show, whose co-hosts regularly humiliated Gretchen Carlson, who may have more i.q. points than Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade combined. They harped regularly on her looks, her wardrobe, and her hotness.

Under Ailes, Fox News had a history of hiring attractive women and placing them in front of the cameras in ways that displayed their physical attributes. Even in an industry like television, which is obsessed with visuals, Fox News stood out for its use of news babes. Turns out, Ailes — who resembles the late Sidney Greenstreet minus the charm — was “flirting” with them and implying that they should put out for him.

In the end, it would appear, the man who ruled by fear was brought down by one brave woman.

Amid all the commentary and analysis, it’s important to keep some sense of perspective. Fox News reaches a maximum of about 3 million different Americans in a typical day. That’s less than 1% of the population. And the ratings for Fox News are no longer climbing; they appear to have topped out. Not only that, but the Fox News audience is considerably older than the ideal “demographic” for television viewing. (Not to mention that the Fox News audience is whiter than average and much more conservative.)

In other words, it’s unlikely that Roger Ailes is the king-maker in national politics that he would like to be (and to be seen as). More and more, it appears that his television channel preaches to the (aging) choir.

Looking forward to reading the new biography of Roger Ailes, the driving force behind Fox News, by Gabriel Sherman. It sounds like this is the one worth waiting for, rather than the earlier version published last year by Zev Chafets, which had Ailes’ cooperation (which can only mean one thing).

Sherman, a contributing editor at New York mag (and Newton, Mass. native), has been working on this book for years, and he certainly has the journalistic credentials to pull it off.

As if that were a shocking ambition for a news executive. The same could have been said of Benjamin Bache at the Philadelphia Aurora in the election of 1796 or of Henry Raymond of the The New-York Daily Times(as it was originally known) in 1856 or William Randolph Hearst every year from 1896 to his death in 1951. American publishers and broadcasters have usually seen themselves as king-makers (it not candidates, a la Hearst). It appears to be one of the major appeals of the job.

Another curious passage from today’s story:

Last year, lawyers from Fox News met with lawyers from Random House to discuss Mr. Sherman’s book. Fox requested the meeting because it had heard about allegations that might be in the book that it said were inaccurate, and to emphasize that the book had not been fact-checked by Fox News.

Well, why would the book be “fact-checked by Fox News”? It should be fact-checked by its own publisher, Random House, not the subject. Isn’t that the essence of editorial responsibility? Sheesh.

Fun fact: Ailes is quoted as calling Bill O’Reilly “a book salesman with a TV show.”